In James Joyce we lip-read: "She thought she's sankh neathe the ground with nymphant shame when he gave her the tigris eye." Right after these lines, now in Finnegans Wake, Joyce has added:"O happy fault! Me wish it was he!" (p.202 Faber).  
I didn't add two and two together because I was led astray by a Mesopotamian river ("tigris"), and a Catholic meaning for a "happy fault" ("felix culpa"). Now, isn't that an example of a goldsmith's (not a wordsmith's) welding of a "Felix tigris"? 
Could VN have spotted and juggled with Joyce's own play by writing about an American* "Felix tigris goldsmithi" (Lolita,209-210)?
 
* - Are there tigers in America? I thought they only roamed in Asian and Russian landscapes, or in Anti-terra.
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